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The other day, I got my first pair of reading glasses. All of a sudden, reading, computers, knitting–even the fine print at the store–is SO much clearer. I’ve had regular glasses since the third grade, so you’d think I wouldn’t be surprised, but it’s easy to forget how much difference a new pair of glasses can make.

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Like this:

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if we are spending our imaginations in the wrong direction. My husband suggested that it was about time for something really, really good to happen. How about a peaceful reunification of North and South Korea?

As a writer of fiction, I know that imagination is a muscle. The more you use it, the longer it works and the stronger it is. Whenever I talk more than I write, the muscle atrophies a little.

I mean, if you could imagine any wonderful thing coming to pass in 2018, what would it be? Is it hard to come up with a positive suggestion? It’s so much easier to complain about things that need to be fixed.

In Berlin, there’s a fascinating and, I think, even-handed exhibit about the pain and hope in Sweden, Korea, Tanzania, and the U.S.A. after the Protestant Reformation.

the moose leather tunic the King of Sweden wore while miraculously surviving a battle in 1627,

an amazing rune stick/sword sheath,

a traditional wedding crown for a Sámi bride, the Laplander culture in the far North of Sweden,

and eyewitness accounts from people all over the world about how their lives have changed over the last 500 years.

One of my favorite discoveries was the Peace Train that traveled from Germany to Korea via Russia in 2013 to peacefully demonstrate for reunification. Here’s a post about the Peace Train in English. A lot of people used their imagination to come up with this one.

A Freedom Train was established in 2014 that travels right to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. One bridge is broken and the other is newly repaired. It’s a powerful image of something that wants to be completed.

This pair of bridges reminds me so much of the abandoned underground train stations between East and West Berlin. As an exchange student in Germany, I spent countless evenings listening to fellow students argue about whether Germany could ever be reunited.

Guess what? There are still scars, but Germany is one country now.

Is it naive to believe that good is possible? The stories we tell ourselves matter. Imagination is a muscle that we can build. What if we all imagined something good–together?

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People look beautiful and shiny to me just now. When I look at families pushing baby strollers or see young couples deciding how to spend their money in the grocery store, or older couples making careful choices, I’m struck with how “temporary” they look.

A little more than a week ago, I almost lost my husband to pulmonary emboli* while we were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the light to change. Thanks to the quick first aid work of our youngest, a passing doctor who stopped, and a kind person who called the ambulance, my husband got almost immediate care.

The whole thing feels impossible. No set-up, no foreshadowing. The week before we were hiking for hours in the sunlit Ahr valley.

We’ve been given another chance. It’s tantalizing to know what to do with it because it feels like a “temporary” awareness. My brain keeps trying to tell me I imagined the whole thing: “There’s no need to change anything now.” But I want to remember long enough to benefit from the experience. It’s a gift that we are still here together.

The next day, I stumbled over this Bible passage in the daily reading:

19 Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden,The God who is our salvation. Selah.20 God is to us a God of deliverances;And to God the Lord belong escapes from death.

I underlined it in my Bible years ago, but I had forgotten it. It makes me think about all the people in dangerous places, escaping with their lives.

We were just standing on a street corner and people came to help us right away. Humbling.

Thank you to the EMT‘s Notfallsanitäter from the Bonn Feuerwehr and to the staff at the St. Peter’s hospital, the Petruskrankenhaus!

*Public health note on pulmonary emboli: I’m an epidemiologist not a doctor, so this is my population-level view. 🙂 Basically, a thrombus or a blood clot–often in the legs–cuts off the circulation at a fixed point, causing swelling and sharp pain. Some people don’t appear to have this warning or misinterpret it as something else.

A pulmonary emboli is like a rogue assassin. It breaks free from a thrombus somewhere and gets stuck in the lungs, causing shortness of breath and sometimes collapse and death. Blood thinners can be given to prevent pulmonary emboli if you know you are at risk. See your doctor. 🙂

If you want to know what puts people at risk for deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, this nested case-control study from the Mayo Clinic gives a good list: Surgery, trauma, hospitalization or nursing home confinement, cancer with or without chemo, pacemaker/catheter, superficial vein thrombosis, neurologic disease with partial paralysis. Varicose veins are a stronger risk factor for younger people (45 years) than for older people.

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Whack! The little girl smacked her tiny rainbow umbrella down on the restaurant’s marble table with an unexpectedly loud crack. No one was hurt; nothing was damaged–or even knocked over–but her eyes widened in horror.

“But I did it on purpose!” A storm of tears followed and she hid her face against her mother. I wanted put an arm around her and say, “We’ve all done things on purpose. I’ve felt exactly the same way. And so did St. Peter.”

When we see the shocking results of something we’ve done “on purpose” we’re dismayed. Sometimes we hurt someone we love and that makes it even worse. But sometimes a “small” failure horrifies us needlessly. We send ourselves off into a spiral of critique and hurt ourselves most.

This morning, I’m trying to start work on the umpteenth revision of a particularly stubborn work-in-progress. Instead of an umbrella beating a marble table, I’m beating up on myself. The familiar inner critic’s comments show up right away: I made this mess of a draft, I did it to myself, it’s my own fault.

A classic case of I-failed-and-I-did-it-to-myself.

I only know one remedy. Go somewhere private–like the middle of the forest–and confess my limited-ness out loud:

I can’t do this by myself. I need help. I tried and I failed. Forgive me for my shortcomings. Forgive me for my ludicrous resentment of the shortcomings of others. Let me hide my face for a while.

It always surprises me. As soon as I stop making myself the center of the universe, I can show my face again. Relief! I’m not the boss. I can start again with a lighter heart.

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A landmark. The day before yesterday, I was given my first garden plot since we moved to Germany. Turning over the soil stirred up surprising feelings.

It’s an International Garden so the invitation was in German and in Arabic. My fellow gardeners are from Egypt, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and Germany. People were talking about melons, chilis, peas, and pole-beans. I’m very curious to see what will grow.

And what will work. We had a lot of animated conversation in several languages while we got the garden beds ready. The way people grow food is as much a part of their culture as the way they eat it. Several gardeners had advanced training in agriculture in their home countries, but everyone dug right in.

First-class dirt. Some of the most fertile in the world. I also learned a new word for dirt. 🙂 Löss (German) and loess (English) refers to the kind of yellow-brown clay-ey soil that is typical of the Rhine and the Mississippi.

In Pearl S. Buck’s classic novel, The Good Earth, the land has the power to bring riches and a new life to a poor farmer. (And, of course, new troubles because a novel is about the way we deal with the challenges, right?)

What will these new gardens bring into our lives? Fruits, vegetables, flowers, barbeque parties, cake, friendships, and maybe a few more roots to this new home.

Is your garden still buried in snow? What are you planning to grow this year?

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This year, my husband gave me a Page-a-Day calendar to learn Italian. Today’s page was a dialogue between two men at a bus stop, getting ready to go to work. One said his boss was nicer than his colleagues. The other said his colleagues were nicer than his boss. [*cough* We’re learning vocabulary here. Cut us some storytelling slack.]

My youngest went off to a new job today and I went along for the new, complicated, commute. At one bus stop, there was a woman dressed in lots of black fabric pushing a stroller with one little boy and holding another boy’s hand. They spoke a dialect I didn’t understand and the hand-holding boy was moaning. Tears were running down his face.

The littler boy in the stroller contorted himself to look up at the woman and got her to agree to something, reluctantly. He pushed the release button on the shoulder straps and jumped up out of the stroller.

He went all the way around in a way that made me–and his mother, who reached after him with her free hand–think he was going to end up in the street. But it wasn’t a ploy for freedom. He came up behind his moaning brother, smiled, and touched him on the shoulder.

The mother helped the bigger boy into the stroller and fastened the straps. The boy’s head still turned from side to side, and he was still moaning, but the tears stopped.

That’s when I realized the younger boy had given up his spot in the stroller for him. He seemed much too young to show such thoughtful and active compassion.

He gave me hope for the future. A person who can smile and help someone else will be an excellent colleague or boss.

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